How to Choose Seeds With Flavor in Mind: In the Garden

 

“Though we simply jot down “green beans” or “tomatoes” on our shopping list, the words only hint at what we’d really like.

 

Italian-style Romano beans, with their big flattened pods, would be better suited than your average string bean to the ragù we might wish to simmer up slowly alongside some big, meaty Amish Paste tomatoes.

 

If only.

 

Lamentably, neither is a regular in the average produce aisle. But by scanning seed catalogs for the variety of each ingredient closest to our desired flavor, shape, scale or texture, we can shop in the garden next harvest season and bring each recipe to its best life.

 

“Vegetables are not generic, and they’re not abstractions,” said Kevin West, author of “The Cook’s Garden: A Gardener’s Guide to Selecting, Growing, and Savoring the Tastiest Vegetables of Each Season.” It’s about “how to be a better cook by stepping into the garden,” he writes, where eventual bounty begins with seeds.

 

“In choosing seeds,” he said, “I always try to take into account the flavor of things — and not just generally, but also the flavor or the application for specific dishes or specific recipes.”

 

Mr. West, who gardens organically in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, scours the listings for hints of “varietal characteristics,” a phrase he borrows from the wine world, where each grape variety is known for distinctive flavor traits. Much how a vintner would not expect zinfandel grapes to yield a wine like one derived from rieslings, Mr. West is clear that two varieties of a vegetable are not always interchangeable.

 

An obvious example is potatoes, he said. Though home gardeners grow them from seed potatoes rather than seeds, those starts must be ordered this winter, too.

 

Mr. West would not garden without two potatoes: Green Mountain, which is a 19th-century Vermont heirloom russet variety with “a really special flavor” and his preferred baking potato, or Upstate Abundance, a tiny, early-maturing variety with very thin skin, grown and dug as a new potato. Fedco Seeds has both.

 

The chef Flynn McGarry, who opened the fine dining restaurant Cove in October on West Houston Street in Manhattan, seconded Mr. West’s Upstate Abundance nomination.

 

“We try to find the tiniest available because of their silky texture and ability to have a full depth of flavor at such a small size,” he wrote in an email, “thanks to the efforts of seed breeders who value flavor first.”

 

Sizing Up the Cucumbers

 

When sizing up other vegetables, the desired traits may differ, but the underlying logic is the same, Mr. West said. If a cucumber under consideration is meant for slicing, he said, “you’re looking for thin skins, a lack of bitterness, a kind of freshness, but sort of a tender crispness.” Mild, sweet-tasting Silver Slicer, with its unusual creamy white skin, from Hudson Valley Seed is one such choice.

 

For pickling though, “what you want is actually exactly the opposite,” he said: small, dense fruits with big texture and flavorful thick skin, such as the four-inch ones of Row 7 Seed Company’s 7082 cucumber.

 

“The taste was startling,” he writes, “like a reunion with a dull college acquaintance who in the intervening years has become magnetic.”

 

Or go smaller still: For nearly seedless cornichons, harvest Parisian Pickling (from Seed Savers Exchange) very young.

 

Sarah Owens, who is the former rosarian at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the author of “Sourdough: Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More,” suggests Armenian cucumbers. Ms. Owens, who gardens in Sonoma County, Calif., appreciates their “slight sweetness and irresistibly crunchy texture,” she wrote in an email, as well as their juiciness.

 

“I live on cucumbers and the hydrating properties they offer in the summer months,” Ms. Owens said, “whether simply sliced and sprinkled with salt or seaweed flakes, tossed with toasted sesame oil, shoyu, a touch of rice vinegar, and sesame seeds, or salted, drained, and folded into thick yogurt with lemon zest and fresh mint.”

 

The Cucumber Shop catalog lists many Armenian types and a diversity of other cucumbers.

 

Some cucumbers find their way into a salad, where Mr. West is particular about greens. His top choice is Tres Fine Maraichere frisée, a curly endive that is smaller and less bitter than full-size endive. Wild Garden Seed has it.

 

Among lettuces, he favors Deer Tongue and Italienischer (Hudson Valley Seed offers both). Each has just a touch of bitterness and slightly thicker leaves than butterhead types. “Because of the shape and the sturdiness of the leaves, they hold dressing really well,” Mr. West said. “The dressing clings to them, but it doesn’t cause them to melt right away, the way butter lettuce goes soft.”

 

And don’t forget chervil, with its hint of anise. “That’s the herb, and salad green, I can’t do without,” he said.

 

One of a Kind Peppers, Carrots and More

 

Certain varieties feel one of a kind to Mr. West, including Jimmy Nardello peppers, with their profusion of long, sweet pods, or the small, round carrot Tonda di Parigi, “round of Paris” in Italian. The carrots are “top-shaped little teensy guys with a wonderful flavor,” he said, adding, “I love to blanch them, then just toss them in butter to glaze them.” (Uprising Seeds has both.)

 

The heirloom Early Summer Crookneck summer squash, from Sow True Seed, is an absolute essential.

 

“There’s nothing else in the kitchen that really duplicates that flavor,” he said. “And I’ve eaten those every summer of my life, because my mother loved them and my grandmother loved them.”

 

He’ll make room for a row of Southern Gentleman shoe peg corn, too, whose white kernels aren’t in rows but randomly patterned; Seed Savers offers that circa 1890 heirloom.

 

Mr. West wants a long broccoli harvest; varieties that head up all at once won’t do. Happy Rich, from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, and Piracicaba, from Turtle Tree Seed, are sprouting broccoli, offering many weeks of smaller gleanings.

 

Don’t forget broccoli rabe, or rapini, said Lane Selman, an assistant professor at Oregon State University who founded the Culinary Breeding Network to foster collaboration among seed breeders, farmers and chefs. Its stronger flavor is essential to orecchiette con cime di rapa, a simple, classic dish from Puglia, Italy, that she loves. Uprising Seeds lists two cima di rapa varieties.

 

Among tomatoes, the possibilities (and opinions) seem infinite, though the yellow hybrid cherry Sungold is widely beloved. Its sweetness “goes almost into a tropical fruit direction,” Mr. West said.

 

He likes to pair it with several contrasting varieties to make a tomato plate. Green Zebra is a standby, along with a dark-fruited choice, like Cherokee Purple, Black Krim or Paul Robeson, which has a smoky flavor.

 

A garden apparently cannot have enough tomatoes, so he adds a Brandywine plant, plus a row of San Marzano for canning as whole tomatoes and making sauce.

 

San Marzanos also pair up in Italian and Greek-influenced sauces and stews with his preferred Romano bean, Northeaster from High Mowing Organic Seeds, a pole variety whose pods average eight inches long and an inch wide.

 

“Obviously that’s not a bean that you’re going to just quickly blanch and serve in a vinaigrette in the same way as an haricot vert,” Mr. West said.

 

His garden is big enough for a long row of a cherished bean for drying, like Kenearly Yellow Eye (from Adaptive Seeds), which has a “rich, brothy flavor.” He plans for quick-pickled beans, too, combining a yellow wax one and a green variety in each jar for colorful fun.

 

Mr. West’s bean-seed shopping doesn’t stop there. He grew up in a farming and gardening family in eastern Tennessee, where greasy beans (so named for their slick pods that lack “that little kind of micro-velour most beans have,” he said) are a longtime culinary tradition. These pole varieties’ pods remain tender after the beans inside grow plump, unlike other fresh-eating green beans.

 

Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center’s impressive listing includes ones with cringe-worthy, dated names like Lazy Wife that nevertheless capture the greasy bean’s two-in-one genius.

 

“You pick the big, meaty pod, and you cook it together with the beans inside, and that’s the whole meal right there,” bean and green, Mr. West said.

 

Sometimes a particular vegetable variety is so distinctive that it practically invents a recipe for itself. Such was the case with a winter squash, Robin’s Koginut from Row 7 Seed, that transformed Mr. West’s holiday table a few years ago.

 

With a pumpkin-like shape about six inches in diameter, it’s ideal stuffing size. He cut off the top, scooped out the seeds, and filled the cavity with cornbread laced with onions, shallots and chestnuts, and roasted it whole.

 

The best part?

 

“The skin is edible so that when you bring it to the table, you can just cut it into triangular slices, almost like cutting a layer cake,” he said.

 

Not every winter squash in the catalogs can make such a claim.” [1]

 

1. How to Choose Seeds With Flavor in Mind: In the Garden. Roach, Margaret.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Dec 10, 2025.